Fracking Hell--The True Cost of America's Naural Gas Rush

The next time you hear the kittens and popsicles niceties from the Natural Gas Industry about how clean NG is, think again.

NY Times investigative reporting on what the real deal is, complete with explosive, confidential until now EPA documents and never released material that the gas industry does not want in the public eye.

The industry whines about increased regulations; "we're going to have to lay off workers if the regulations are tightened." Meanwhile, the companies are top heavy with fat cat executives and the profit margins for these mega companies are through the roof.

Laying off workers so the company big wigs can maintain their lavish lifestyles is almost like asking you to play a perverted game of Russian roulette-- Do you want your health or a pay check?

Why can't you have both?

Posted by Winger

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"Poison Fire" Trailer--Shell Oil Gas Drilling in Nigeria

Shell Oil has been notorious in the region for decades and Nigeria remains on the ever growing list of who does not profit from the "promises of community prosperity" from Big Oil and Gas. 

In 2004, the Nigerian senate ordered Shell to pay 1.5 billion dollars in compensation to communities. Shell refused. In 2006 the high court upheld the ruling. Shell appealed and, like in several hundred smaller cases against the oil companies, no money is ever paid. The appeals process drags on for years. Many Nigerian lawyers argue that the oil companies are above the law in Nigeria.

What lessons can we learn from this here in America? That big gas and oil will lie and shirk responsibility when something goes wrong? And that our legal system will help them avoid paying full compensatory damages? 
You think?

Read more here

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Gas Industry Secrets And A Nurse's Story--High Country News Erin Frankowski

With the debate on hydraulic fracking heating up (HuffPost Mark Ruffalo's Crusade Against Fracking article) this previous published story from High Country News, Writers On The Range Eric Frankowski deserves a second time around:

This July, an emergency room nurse named Cathy Behr wanted to tell Colorado's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission the story of how she nearly died after being exposed to a mystery chemical from a gas-patch accident.

Regulators said she wasn't scheduled to testify and they didn't want to hear it. But anyone concerned about natural gas development should listen.

Behr, who works in southern Colorado, at Durango's Mercy Regional Medical Center, fell ill last April after being exposed for 10 minutes to a gas-field worker who had come into the ER, his clothes damp and reeking. He'd come into contact with one of the "secret formulas" drillers use to hydraulically fracture oil- and gas-bearing formations.

Within minutes of inhaling the nauseating fumes coming off the worker, Behr lost her sense of smell. (She later told her story to the Durango Herald, a daily paper that has done excellent reporting on the incident: durangoherald.com.) The ER was locked down and the room ventilated by firefighters. But when Behr went home after her 12-hour shift, she still couldn't smell anything. Then the headache she'd developed got worse. A week later, her liver, heart and lungs began to shut down. She spent 30 hours in intensive care.

Read more here

The Huff Post story is well above 550 comments at last check, but this story from the High Country News' Erin Frankowski is compelling and thought provoking about the dangers of even passive exposure from fracking. 

Nothing about this process is safe, in fact it's all fracked up anyway you look at it.

What else should we expect from Halliburton?

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Frack MixPlex Gives Vincent Alabama Confidential and Others A Much Appreciated "Attaboy!"

And we thank them for it, along with their hard work on advancing issues that we all should care about. Kudos to our fellow like-minded bloggers and the mighty keyboards they sit behind. We would add the work of Dr. Robert Bullard as high on our own list, because without him there would be no modern day environmental justice movement.

Mixplex Environmental Justice Blogroll Note

On Martin Luther King Day (MLK Day Jan. 17, 2011), America deserves to be reminded that hard on the trail of King's Civil Rights legacy in Alabama is the way Alabama's poor have been victimized by negligent environmental law.

The daily posts of Max Shelby and his group, blogging in Alabama about the environment, politics, big business and corruption are some of the boldest independent voices writing in the U.S. on environment justice today.

If you're not following writers like Shelby's Vincent Alabama Confidential, Sharon Wilson's Bluedaze, Shelly Thomas on Futurism Now, Ken Ward Jr.'s Coal Tattoo, the late Karen Korell's Splashdown, Bill Wolfe's Wolfenotes, Amy Mall's blog on NRDC Switchboard, Rick Plitz on Climate Science Watch, and the many other personal and professional authors, videomakers, humorists, and journalists located by scrolling through these double pages: Background, Companies, Experts, Government, Legal, Opinions and Press, you are missing out on the most entertaining, free, participatory, First Amendment, punch the bully in the nose shows in this nation.

This writing takes courage and sacrifice and I want to recognize them all here on MLK Day through Shelby's 2010 post as the proudest way that we demonstrate to the World that we will manage our industries without the sacrifice of liberty by ensuring that our laws are fair and just to all.
(2011-01-14, nz.)

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